Midsummer Night pull question

Elizabeth H. Bush

Mr. Bartel

TA Yorba Linda

Shakespeare

Pull Question-Midsummer Night's Dream

September 24, 2009

Is love in our world as arbitrary as the love of the enchanted lovers in A Midsummer Night's Dream?

In the world of the lovers of  A Midsummer Night's Dream, love itself seems to be a dream, mixed up, topsy turvy, and never constant.  First, Demetrius and Lysander are in love with Hermia, while Helena is left to love Demetrius without return.  Then by the aid of Puck's magic potion, both Demetrius and Lysander turn their eyes upon Helena, abandoning their previous paramore, Hermia.  In the end, the original lovers, Lysander and Hermia, are reunited, while Dmetrius turns back to his first love Helena through the aid of another of Puck's magic potions.  It seems to me however, that the constancy and fidelity of love in Shakespeare can be called into question by the example of these lovers, who fall in and out of love at the mere drop of a hat.

"But that is merely the effect of faeries' magic," you may argue, "and my lover and I will remain true to one another forever."  Yes, granted, Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius' love was confused and shuffled through the potion, but in the end, does not Demetrius wed Helena still under the effect of that same potion?  Romantic love such as is portrayed by Shakespeare is just as magical, mysterious, arbitrary, and incomprehensible in our day as it was in his.  Falling in love is something no scientist can explain, no psychologist can rationalize.  Like faerie's magic, eros is something that comes upon us unawares, bewitching our minds and altering our senses.  While it lasts, we are caught in its grasp, unable to explain why we do what we do except by attributing it to love.  Yet it may leave as suddenly as it comes, leaving us bewildered, yet seemingly sober and rational.  Our lovers, like deserted Hermia and Helena, may follow us with tragic laments, accusing us of infidelity and instability, but this is eros.  Like the faeries who caused it, eros is a sprite, a feather in the wind, fickle and inconstant, blowing whither it will.  

Is there then no hope for lovers in the world?  For those who choose to submit to the passion of eros, must htey also accept its arbitraryness?  Do we fall in love wilfully knowing that we may as quickly fall out of love?  Those who have loved pray that it is not so, but unfortunately it often is.  With no faerie potions to alter our vision and direct our emotions, causing us to love another until the faeries choose to remove that love, we of the modern world must manage our own love affairs as best we can with little but our own hearts to guide us, and as seen in Shakespeare, these hearts can be as fickle as the faeries themselves.